Here is an example from my most recent tournament that is very typical of my thought process up to this point in my development:
My 1600 opponent has just played 14... Nfd7. Intellectually, I realized during the game that NxN was the best move. But it looked dead and drawish to me. I went into "a draw is a loss mode" instead of "play the best move" mode and was ready to do just about anything to avoid the dreaded NxN. So I played 15. Nd3 fully realizing that 15... e5 was a major problem. I voluntarily entered a worse position hoping to increase my winning chances even though I knew I was drastically increasing my chances of losing. Needless to say, my opponent happily played 15... e5 and my attempts to complicate the position were thwarted. I do this type of thing quite often. I almost never lose serious material or get checkmated in long time controls, but I frequently make these types of decisions which lead to a slow, grinding death.
I think a better title for my thread might have been "learning to adapt to the drawish nature of chess" or some such. To be clear, I am talking primarily about dealing with a psychological leak... my brain equating draws to losses or perceiving boring, equal position as losing positions.
I play for both enjoyment and competition... they are one and the same to me. I simply love to compete and improve at games. In all other games/sports I have played, draws basically do not exist. My mind is wired to compete for a win and to do my absolute best to find a way to win even if things are going poorly. The inclusion of draws into the mix really seems to confuse me.
And fwiw, I am fully aware that I have tons of leaks in my chess game. I just feel like this psychological leak should be a relatively easy fix. In the game I posted, I could certainly play NxN and win. But to do so, I have to be psychologically willing to accept that a draw is okay.
Some adjustments I have already made that have really helped:
1) Making myself play positional openings such as the Catalan, Caro-Kann, and the Accelerated Dragon where I will usually be playing in the center or queenside.
2) Working hard on my endgames and learning to appreciate their beauty so that I am less inclined to go kamikaze in the middle game.
3) Trying harder to appreciate the games of players like Karpov, Petrosian, and Kramnik.
4) Just generally being proud of myself when I win long, grindy games.
I have also considered creating a personal rating system for my USCF rated games that gives me a small bonus for draws or some such lol.
Fwiw, I spend the vast majority of my training time on tactical puzzles, endgames, and long over the board or online games. As long as my openings are "good enough" at my level (they almost always are), I am happy and spend my study time on more important topics since class players inevitably change our repertoires multiple times before reaching expert anyway.